Study Questions: Shakespeare's
Sonnet Selections
Vocabulary: sonnet, couplet,
octave, meter, rhyme
Know the rhyme scheme for an English Sonnet.
Be able to explain why the Earl of Surrey and other adapters
changed the older Italian or Petrarchan Sonnet's rhyme scheme.
Be able to list the rhyme scheme
Sonnet 18: What
question does the poetic speaker ask himself in the
opening
lines of this sonnet? What does he ultimately decide about
whether or not this comparison is a good one? What are
some
of the problems with a summer's day that the poet discusses
in the first eight lines? What does the poet mean when
he
says, "But thy eternal summer shall not fade"?
The poet also promises, "Nor shall death brag thou
wander'st in his shade." Does this seem possible
or plausible as a promise? The last two lines, however,
limit
the promise to "So long as men can breathe, or eyes
can see, / So long lives this, and this gives life to
thee."
What does the "this" refer to? How does "this"
continue to give this young woman life--even four hundred
years after Shakespeare wrote the poem?
Sonnet 116: TBA
Sonnet 130: Describe the
speaker's "mistress" in this poem. What color
is her skin? Her breasts? Her cheeks? Her hair? What is
the texture of her hair like? What does her breath smell
like? What does her voice sound like? When his mistress
walks, where does she walk? How does this contrast (apparently)
with what other poets claim about their mistresses? To what
sort of supernatural being do they apparently contrast their
lovers? Why does the poet think his love is rare? How does
the poet play with conventional stereotypes of love poetry?
How is the speaker's lover an inversion or parody of the
petrarchan and medieval lover?
Identifications:
A. Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this and this gives life to thee.
B. My mistress' eyes are nothing like
the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damask'd, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.